It is quite safe to say that the Video Game industry is often times a rather sexist industry. This is something no one is proud of but stems back to old values and hopefully overtime this will change, but why do I mention this here you ask? Well A Kickstarter started late March has aimed to raise funds for a nine year old girl to go to an RPG Maker camp to develop their very own RPG.

It’s an interesting proposition and as the indie market is all about gamers making games for like minded individuals so a nine year old creating an RPG for children is surly a good thing and the learning experience alone is rather great. Due to many developers not looking at making games for such young audiences this idea could be something rather interesting.

Of course the Kickstarter is quite the strange one overall for this project because you are not so much expecting to get a final product out of it but more to help someone else out, which is rather commendable. Interestingly the community has really rallied behind this project greatly exceeding the requested $829 goal raising so far $23,000 which is very impressive to say the least.

With such an excess of funds raised we may even see full development of an RPG from MacKenzie Wilson although at this stage the direction they intend to take is unclear. I am all for people using Kickstarter in new and creative ways, although is this use out of the remit to what we expect from Kickstarter? It’s difficult to say overall and getting children involved in game design is always a good thing s surely

Be sure to leave your comments below about what your stance is on this project and Kickstarter overall. MacKenzie Wilson’s campaign can be followed on Kickstarter here.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – An Innovative Use Of Crowdfunding To Educate

The Briefcase is simply something special. It’s a indie horror game that was created and developed by Brandon Mattice. The goal of the game is to search through an abandoned warehouse so that you can find “The Briefcase.” If you’re lucky enough, you may even find close to a million dollars in that briefcase. No one has known anything of what The Briefcase contains. You could find a million dollars, access to the government treasury (I guess that’s not really worth anything) or even your own private yacht. It could be anything. The only thing is, this briefcase has something to deal with the warehouse workers disappearing. There’s also something that’s out to get you; someone who does not want you to get your hands on The Briefcase. You can check out the embedded trailer for The Briefcase below.

Developer Brandon Mattice developed and created The Briefcase inside an engine known as FPS Creator, a pre-built editor to make your own games without any coding experience needed. He claims that he’s “pushed the engine to its limits.” From his teaser trailer embedded above, I have to say, he has done a fine job. The Briefcase is an excellent indie horror game, and the fact that the game is free of charge, makes it even better. If you’re interested in trying out a free quality game, you can head on over to Brandom Mattice’s portfolio website, Cool Shades Media, where there will be a download link to the 60MB game.

The Briefcase will definitely interest people who enjoy dark and spooky games while not being able to expect what’s coming. Sort of like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but just a bit less extreme than that title.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Adventure Through an Abanonded Warehouse To Find Out What Secrets Lay Inside “The Briefcase”

I pride myself on looking for innovation, however I often fail to find what I am looking for. I truly am willing to try anything, but instead of venturing I often find myself returning to known genres and areas. Often it is easier to just rifle through games until I find another RPG rather than find something I am uncomfortable with, but would no doubt provide captivating gameplay, for me it’s a matter of entry barrier. It would be so very easy to pick up a game I could quickly become familiar with and engross myself in, rather than a game I would need to think about and learn from.

This, I feel has become the attitude of many developers I am not trying to generalize, however it is not all that often I see a revolutionary title being released. It seems that ideas are being recycled, which is fine because often the best ideas are those built on the basis of others. There would be no Braid without Mario; there would be no Dust: An Elysian Tale without Castlevania. Those games built upon those original ideas, then deferred from certain areas to create a uniquely innovative experience. It would appear developers have figured out it is easier to take a good idea recycle it and sell it, than it is to conceptualize something new with the risk of it failing and lose more money than a recycled idea would.

This is where my disappointment in the current development of a genre comes from. Horror games evolved for about a solid minute then proceeded to once again stagnate and become a series of similar clones. I cannot describe to you the disappointment I have been feeling whilst looking at the Greenlight page. While they are harder to find now that the format has changed, Amnesia: The Dark Descent clones are infesting the horror section. There are so many physics-based, weaponless, first-person horror games that it is difficult to even figure out if one is possibly innovative that is unless you spend the time looking at the dev pages for each and every game.

So, I suppose my formatting is different than most weeks and I have not yet said why Amnesia and Lone Survivor are important. Their importance comes from the fact they are good games, but they both shine a light on the good and bad of innovation. Let me set this straight before I move on to anything else, Amnesia and Lone Survivor are excellent titles and both innovated the horror genre in different ways. Amnesia’s brand of horror caught on, whilst Lone Survivor seems to be an innovation of which no copies have been made, however they both were innovative and show distinct effects innovation can have.

Lone Survivor shows a less rippling innovation or a sort of huge splash in a pond which has hardly any lingering effects. Perhaps it was due to the odd styling and heavy dialog, but Lone Survivor was a difficult game to make, it took the devs 4 years to get the game to market and has two distinctive branching storylines. The horror of Lone Survivor is psychologically based rather than based on cheap thrills and sudden jumps. Horror such as this is executed through solid writing and tense environments with these qualities requiring a great deal of work, time, and money to create; all things of which indie devs do not always have a great deal of.

Amnesia operates differently to Lone Survivor, it was no less innovative than Lone Survivor but offered a different type of terror to the player. Amnesia approached horror with dialogue, but to a much lesser extent. There were not many characters, and the graphics engine was nothing unusual or innovative it created something new, but relatively easily to copy. Physics-based doors, which required the user to actually open the doors using the push or pull of a mouse was a very cool concept, equally interesting was the sanity meter for the main character Daniel. These aspects were innovative but they are easily recreated as developers knew that these could be reused and still offer a palatable horror experience.

I suppose I am approaching this from a philosophical approach. The importance of both games goes way deeper than just as successes which had different effects on the genre, but the most learnable lessons of both games comes from what they say about the development of games. Amnesia is a revolutionary idea, but one that is easy to build again and a copyable experience. Lone Survivor is a first of its kind and last of its kind type of game, rather than build the next revolution by creating new mechanics like Amnesia and Lone Survivor did, there is a trend of leeching on to the ease of Amnesia. Amnesia and Lone Survivor are important because they show which ideas will be borrowed and which will be lost respectively, the graspable and the difficult.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – The Why of Indie Games: ‘Amnesia’ and ‘Lone Survivor’

With Halloween getting progressively closer there will be no doubt a huge number of horror games being unveiled over this month for the biggest horror holiday on the calendar. Paranoia: The Hotel is of course going down the whole horror route and is from indie developers Orion Software.

The story for Paranoia: The Hotel is very basic like all good horrors just aiming to set the scene, whilst holding back as much information as possible until you get into the game. The story is as follows: In 1967 a hotel located in Northumberland was abandoned, the reason for the abandonment has remained unknown.. until now.

The story does sound very typical of the horror genre as a whole and nothing really inspired, however this is merely a vehicle to set the scene for the horror elements and of course a premise to the point of the game. Although very little has been released about Paranoia: The Hotel like many horror games the proof is often in the gameplay itself. So far it looks to be very encouraging, running with the common vibe now of no weapon helpless horrors very much brought about by Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Paranoia: The Hotel does seem to of taken the tried and tested route of late and hopefully it will manage to reimagine the gameplay with some unique features in the upcoming title. Orion Software are aiming to get a demo out before too long which will make for interesting play no doubt, hopefully showcasing some reasons as to why this game will be a stand out this halloween.

Paranoia: The Hotel is expected to be out for halloween this year in true horror game style, follow the development here along with Orion software’s official site here.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Paranoia: The Hotel’ Gearing Up For A Halloween Release

Now here’s a paradox – an overwhelmingly atmospheric game set on the moon? Likelier than you think. We’ve covered Routine (from the fittingly named Lunar Software) a couple of times before, but now it’s really shaping up to be something special. A semi-roguelike-esque first person horror/exploration game. You’ve got one life, an uncertain environment around you, and a mission to discover why a moon-base has gone silent. Here’s some appropriately intense new footage:

And let this be a lesson to you: Gunfights in space are a very bad idea, even worse than gunfights on Earth. I’m digging what I’m seeing so far – what looks to be a rather more serious ‘hard’ sci-fi setting. No outlandish monsters, although some rather imposing robots and guys with guns. The game promises to be a more tactile experience than most, with Deadzone aiming (think along the lines of Red Orchestra or Arma) and little to no HUD. No health points, either. Injury is going to be handled more realistically here, too. Oh, and as mentioned, you’ve got one life. Death resets everything, and things might play out very differently next time round.

There’s no fixed release date yet for Routine, although the developers have ballparked it for 2013. Keep an eye on IGM for more big reveals as they happen, as well as the official site for the game.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Routine’ Promises Space-Borne Scares In This New Gamescom Trailer

It seems that game journalists turning developer is a bit of a thing these days. Between indie blog guru Derek Yu making XBLA mega-hit Spelunky, the editor of PC Gamer UK producing Gunpoint and Rock, Paper, Shotgun editor Jim Rossignol developing Sir, You Are Being Hunted, it seems like it’s just getting easier and easier to sit down, assemble a team and put together something worth playing. With a history of picking apart other people’s games for a living, it might help direct development, too, but that’s an article for another time.

Sir, You Are Being Hunted isn’t Big Robot’s first game, but it’s their first major commercial release. Described as a very British take on the STALKER series, it puts you in the shoes of a squishy, regular human out on the rolling British moors. As the title suggests, you’re being hunted by respectable, gentlemanly killer robots and their equally deadly robot hounds. There’s even a few surly robot poachers lurking in the long grass, looking for an easy kill or a chance to stir up trouble with the groundskeepers. Your goal is simple – survival – but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be easy. Here’s our first look at it in action:

Being born and bred in rainy, fog-bound old Blighty, I can safely say that those are the most British environments I’ve ever seen a machine generate. They’ve absolutely nailed the look of it all – the hedgerows, the crumbling old masonry and the slightly-too-steep hills hidden beneath thick wild grass. The game is due sometime next year, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of semi-public early build before then.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Witness The Dawn of Tweedpunk In ‘Sir, You Are Being Hunted’s First Trailer

To get the boilerplate out of the way: Anna is the first game out from Italian developer Dreampainters. It is a horror game with adventure elements built around legends from the Val D’Ayas region of Italy. Anna was built in Unity and is currently only on PC, though other verions are planned for the future. The game is currently available on Desura.

All of that is factual information about Anna, but that doesn’t tell you what Anna is. Let me try to explain.

[This Content is Exclusive for Insider]

Anna can be purchased through Desura.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Anna Delivers Occult Scares and Difficult Puzzles

Now here’s a Kickstarter that I’ve no problem pointing people to. I’ve been a long-time fan of bizarre Russian indie studio Ice-Pick Lodge. They’ve only made a few games to date, but they’ve been three of the most creative and interesting I’ve seen in years. Pathologic was a game about desperation, plague and decay, and despite a cripplingly bad translation (outsourced by the publisher, apparently), a genuinely interesting story. The script won awards in its native Russian, at least.

Their second outing, The Void, was an intense first-person action adventure set in a nightmarish purgatorial realm filled with hideous and twisted guardians known as the Brothers, and a chain of beautiful, siren-like figures known as the Sisters. Neither side is to be entirely trusted, and neither is what they first seem to be. Great translation, too – done in-house by the studio itself.

The third game was the downright loopy Cargo: The Quest For Gravity. Probably their most derivative title (it played a lot like Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts), but held together by a gloriously odd setting, with you playing as a gravelly-voiced female engineer, building machines to navigate the landscape and trying to help the Buddies – the new successor race to mankind after a grand god-spawned funpocalypse – find their way in a potentially lethal world.

Today, Ice-Pick announced their fourth game, Knock-Knock!, and are apparently going fully independent this time. The small Russian outfit aim to raise a fairly small $30,000, and are already just shy of $5k, with a month and a half left on the clock. Interestingly, while the final retail price is set to be $10, a $5 pledge will get you the full game when it’s released, as well as some bonus perks. There’s also a bit of a story behind this one, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Described as a cartoonish, 2D game of horror hide-and-seek, in Knock-knock! you play as a strange, scraggly-haired hermit living in a shack deep in the forest. Each night, the Visitors come a-knocking. Strange, twisted creatures, ghosts and other forest-dwelling things of weirdness. They don’t seem to be too hostile, given the teaser video above, but coming into contact with them erodes at the protagonists sanity and health, so they’re best avoided.

The strangest part of this whole Kickstarter project is that the concept of the game doesn’t belong to Ice-Pick. Rather, they were supposedly mailed a package containing video clips and notes, detailing a failed and possibly cursed game development project. Along with this nightmare diary, there was a request that Ice-Pick take up the gauntlet and complete the game, and release it to an unsuspecting world. Whether this story is made up or true really doesn’t matter – it makes for a fascinating bit of backstory to the development of the game itself.

As an additional twist to the tale, this archive of spooky data is going to be bundled in with the game. Apparently yet another requirement as stated by The Originator – the name given by the developers to the mysterious malefactor that roped Ice-Pick into this bizarre little bit of game development history.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m quite interested in this. It’s a bit corny on paper, but never underestimate how a clever bit of high-tech haunting can get under your skin…

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Ice-Pick Lodge Seeking A Chilling $30k Kickstarter Funding For ‘Knock-Knock!’

It’s a rare, special thing to see an indie game draw a large and dedicated modding community. All the more rare when the genre lies outside of shooting or strategising. Multi-award-winning frightfest Amnesia: The Dark Descent is one of those lucky few, and there’s some genuinely great fan-made stories to be seen once you’re done with the original campaign. Let’s have a quick peek at some of the more notable releases.

Widely agreed to be the cream of the crop is White Night. Released late last year, but updated again earlier in 2012. Leaving the historical setting of the main game in favour of a classic horror archetype – an abandoned modern hospital – and switching out your oil lantern for a flashlight, there’s less focus on straight monsters-and-weirdness horror here and more psychological thriller stuff happening. It’s the length of a good couple of horror movies, and there’s definitely notes of Session 9 and Jacob’s Ladder about it. Not bad things to be inspired by, really!

Going back to the original storyline of the game, Amnesia: Through The Portal is an unofficial expansion that carries on the plot after the ‘best’ ending. Less traditional horror here, and more exploring the weird and wonderful possibilities put forward by the rather Lovecraftian finale of the original. There’s still monsters and plenty of threats to your health, but after surviving the final encounter of the original game, it feels a little hard to be genuinely terrified.

Another highly praised campaign (even winning an official mod development contest) taking the game outside of its usual bounds is La Caza. A somewhat more modern tale, seperate from Amnesia itself and with a little bit of a meso-American twist. La Caza spans a good range of outdoors and interior environments, and despite largely using the resources seen in the original game, it applies them in a clever range of ways that feels like an homage rather than a clone or continuation. While it does well to capture the atmosphere of Amnesia itself, I think that the architecture used is possibly a little too simplistic, but the new voice acting is remarkably solid.

And a special bonus recommendation of the Dark Room series. Unbelievably stupid, but funny. Saying anything more would be a terrible spoiler. You can find plenty more mods on the official Amnesia forums or listed on ModDB – the developers were celebrating over 100 complete, released mods quite some time ago. A number that has undoubtedly swelled to new heights.

A huge number of people now own Amnesia, thanks to it being a featured item in a recent Humble Bundle, and being a regular Steam sale fixture, so there’s a huge audience out there that have probably never played beyond the original campaign. A pity, given that that Frictional – the developers – produced their own official mod which is now bundled with the game. Look for ‘Justine’ when you launch the game. It’s a standalone story, and a rather clever piece of work.

All of this was made possible due to the efforts Frictional put into the tool-set when producing the game. Give or take a few finer features, the tools used to create all these custom adventures are the exact same used to create the main game itself. It also highlights just how powerful set-dressing, lighting and fog effects can be in creating atmosphere, as the block-based environments themselves are fairly underwhelming when viewed in the full light of day. Horror is all about what you can’t see, rather than what you can, after all.

With any luck, this should help tide you hungry fright-fans over until the official sequel – Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs – is released next year. Got a favourite mod/story that you want to recommend? Or made one yourself? Share in the comments box below. I promise it won’t bite. Much.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Infinite Fear – The Many Mods Of ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’

Survival horror is a genre that the majority of you are probably familiar with. Especially with the current zombie craze that seems to be shuffling rampantly through videogames these days. RocketBear Studios plans to take the genre and splice it with another big-ticket: the free-to-play MMORPG. But I actually hesitate to call it that because of how different the planned game, The Living: 30 Days to Survive, is from almost every other MMORPG in existence. There are no missions, no side-adventures; your goal is written clearly in the title. Survive a zombie-infested apocalypse for 30 days of real time.

There are four professions you can choose from when creating your customizable character. A Mechanic can help with all your technological needs. (A broken-down car is less than helpful when you’re attempting to escape zombies.) If you choose to team up with your fellow survivors, a Politician is handy to have around. They are “natural-born leaders” who can boost the stamina and will to live of the group, as well as use their keys to the city to reach useful supplies. Survivors can tell you which wildlife is and is nor poisonous, as well as throw up a helpful tent. And a nearby Surgeon can save your life if you get bitten — at the cost of your limb. You then have the rest of your 30 days with a missing arm or leg. But hey, you’re still alive!

That brings us to the interesting question of what happens to you if you don’t survive the 30 days. If you are slaughtered by zombies or brutalized by your fellow humans (yes, you can kill each other!) your character will rise again. That’s right — die in the zombie apocalypse, and you get to play as a zombie! In this state, you can chase down and attempt to kill other human players. You can look for ways to level up your zombie to make them a bigger threat, or you can search for the mythical place where it is said there may be a way to become human again…

The Living is trying to do something that isn’t done nearly often enough in gaming; forge a new way to play. Unfortunately, its Kickstarter isn’t doing so hot and at the time of this article, is only has six days to survive. If you want to know more about The Living, you can check out its blog.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘The Living’ — Get Ready For A New Way To Survive